


All of your fears will pass away (safe in my arms)

by Hieiandshino



Category: Avengers (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Event: Secret Wars
Genre: Character Death, End of the World, Gen, M/M, Sad Ending, idk how to tag it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:32:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hieiandshino/pseuds/Hieiandshino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He wishes he had had more time with him. There is so much they didn’t do; so much he didn’t say; so much he didn’t feel with Pietro.</i> If I could re-write my story, I’d put you there, forever with me, <i>Clint thinks. It would always end with a happy ending and Pietro would never be hurt again.</i></p>
<p>(Written for the prompt: Your OTP giving each other one last kiss before certain death. Chosen by draft on the Angst Night Challenge that is happening on my Twitter. Unrevised work.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of your fears will pass away (safe in my arms)

**Author's Note:**

> Marvel (all media types) does not belong to me.
> 
> Title comes from "Into the West", by Annie Lennox.
> 
> Spoilers from _Secret Wars_. Set after _Avengers: Millenium_ and _All-New X-Factor #12_.
> 
> This fanfic was unrevised and, because my first language isn't English, there will be mistakes. Besides, I just finished this fanfic and didn't revise at all -- I'll do it when I have the time, because I still want to write another one for the challenge.
> 
> Written for the _Weekend Challenge: Angst Night_ on my Twitter. The challenge consisted on me signing up for it and waiting until 9 pm (Brazil's time) for the prompt it would be drafted for me. My prompt was: _Your OTP giving each other one last kiss before certain death._ You're welcome.

The city is on fire.

Clint sits at the edge of the rooftop of his building, dangling his limbs like a child, and watches the end of the world from Brooklyn. A few minutes ago, he checked every tenant and told them that it would be okay. The Avengers and he would help. They would fix things. Made them believe that this wasn’t the end of the world and that another universe was not attacking them, trying in vain to survive. Simone’s kids believed in him but were still crying when he left to the rooftop. Barney’s eyes were soft and hopeful, but it was all a ruse to keep Simone and her children safe. He knew because Clint told him. The truth. About the world, about the _universe_. About Nat.

At the rooftop, before he even opened the door, Clint could hear the crying of people, their screams as loud as the car alarms echoing through the neighborhood. Through the city. Through the world. The perfect symphony for the end of the world, Clint thought, and then decided he had heard that enough of that for a lifetime. He listened the same song before he clashed against the Kree spaceship, all those years ago. He took off his hearing aids and the world fell silent.

He knows he should help. Knows every superhero is fighting this— this end and helping people, but he is tired. Clint is tired of being brave and leaping into danger so somebody else could live. But he knows he won’t escape it, nobody will — he was with his comm opened in the same frequency as Natasha and Jess when they fell. It broke him, to see Natasha Romanova screaming before she hit the ground, consumed by flames. Natasha never screamed. After that, he decided to not leave. “I’d be useless out there anyway.” Clint says, or thinks he says, because without Stark’s hearing aids he can no longer hear his own voice.

The world is weird without sound. Time seems to stop and Clint feels like he is the only one who is moving. Before Reed Richards’s announcement, his deafness was a curse, something he did not know how to deal with. Refused to. Now that it is happening, the end of the world is there knocking on their door, it is a bless. Small mercies and all that.

Clint feels the breeze before he sees the man. Pietro stands near him in a blink of an eye, less than a second after the wind that gave him away. Clint turns to admire the man. For the first time, Pietro Maximoff dons a white costume. Before, the white was just the lighting, a break on all that blue or green, like him in a battle or a fight ( _or on someone's life, like Clint himself and his arrows that always hit the weakest spot_ ). It’s as if Pietro finally made peace with himself, after he came clean to the world while wearing a yellow costume, bright as the sun, giving in to new beginnings and new teams.

( _Clint remembers not watching that interview. He was busy at the hospital, looking at the white ceiling and wondering how could he have fucked up this much. How could he have let his brother get this hurt. Take away his legs with a bullet called_ my mistakes. _It was one of the first things he read when he arrived at his house, deaf. He looked at the news online and checked his emails. Natasha only sent one link and when he opened it the truth came to him and he— he was already expecting that. It wasn’t as if nobody knew that Pietro was lying; it was just nobody wanted to comment on it_ ).

Pietro sits by his side, dangles his legs too and smiles when Clint laughs. Things are easy now — now, at the end of the world; now, after all that time living in that pre-historical time — and Clint thinks to himself: _damn, God is good_. It took forever for Pietro and him to be on the same page and now, _now_ — Some things were meant to be.

“You’re not out there?” Clint asks, turning to Pietro, just to make sure he is not gone. Pietro has his legs spread, his elbows resting on his knees and he is leaning in as if ready to jump. Pietro looks at him and, wow, now that he doesn’t rely much on his ears, he sees much more. The way Pietro moves, so fast Clint only sees him start to turn his head and then he has fully moved and is looking directly at Clint. Clint would have lost the movement alltogether. Without thinking, he takes Pietro’s glasses off his face, wishing to see Pietro's green eyes.His heart skips a beat when Pietro lets him, eyes closed and serene expression on his face. It's like a movie's scene, even though Pietro does this so that he won’t get temporarily blind because of all that light.

( _it’s a sunny, beautiful day and the world to end_ )

Pietro straightens up and his hands move slower than Clint ever saw them and in movements that enchant. It takes a moment for him to understand that he is signaling his answer. It makes him want to cry.

_I could ask the same thing_ , Pietro says. Clint snorts and it’s his time to answer: _When did you learn language signs? Didn’t feel like it. You?_ Pietro pauses for a moment before he answers: _Recently_ ( _Clint reads:_ after what happened to you, because I care and always will care for you) _. It was useless. Fighting._

_Yeah, I felt the same thing_ , Clint signals and then looks up. The sky is still too blue for such a sad day, but… But it kinda makes sense. God made this world to be beautiful. Clint too would want to see it dying in a beautiful day too. He is thinking too much of God, Clint thinks. The end of the world really shows your priorities.

_Priorities_ , he thinks and then turns to Pietro: _Why aren’t you with Luna and Crystal? Or your sisters?  
_

Pietro stops for a moment, tries to understand what Clint meant before he grasps that Clint first used _moon_ to name Luna and then remembered Pietro would understand it too if he just used _daughter_ and _ex-wife_. After a few seconds — and how amusing it is to see Quicksilver of all superheroes to stop for a moment and think of what and how to say something? —, Pietro answers. _I was with them before they embarked in one of the ships. Lorna and Wanda were helping the civilians. I wanted to see you._

Clint does not ask why. He could, he should, but he doesn’t. He knows that the time at pre-historical Earth — where they both were in peace and were all by themselves — changed them. Part of him still goes to sleep at night and thinks of the way Pietro leaned in and kissed him, sure and hopeless; the way Pietro looked like illuminated only by the fire, naked and pliant in ways Clint never saw him be; the way Pietro held his hand before they went through the vortex when Cap was finally found by whoever was in the future ( _Wanda and Banner_ ); the way Pietro traced his fingers, mesmerized, when Spider-Man left them alone for a few moments.

_We are going to die, aren’t we?_ Clint asks for no reason. Everyone knows they are going to die. They feel it in their skin and bones; the way the world is slowly dying. The way reality is collapsing. It sends chills even if their skins are too hot. Or maybe it is panic and fear that are settling in, but Clint likes to think he nailed it down those two by dealing with the end of the world before.

Pietro doesn’t answer. He just looks at Clint before he leans in and brings his fingers to Clint’s face. As if he could not see, he traces Clint’s face slowly, trying to memorize it before it istoo late. Clint feels his lips trembling and fights the urge to not cry.

He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die again, damn it.

“Why us?” He asks suddenly and when he looks at Pietro, his face is bitter, but his eyes show that he isn’t scared. He isn’t. “Why aren’t you scared?” Clint shouts and tries to not think of how much his hands must be shaking. He does not check to see if they really are. Shaking. He does not check.

Pietro kisses him. First on his forehead and then in each eye. Clint feels the tears falling and wonders why the hell he can’t win even once. He saves the world? Dies in the process. He comes back? Aliens invade. Bobbi is alive? Norman Osborn becomes the leader of the Avengers. He gets an apartment and feels like an adult? Russian mob. Tries to avenge his friend and gets his brother back? Is hurt and loses his hearing, while Barney is paraplegic. Finally gets together with Pietro Maximoff in their own weird way? World ends.

It’s funny and awfully sadistic. Clint feels like drowning and not even Pietro’s warmth can make him feel better. “I don’t want to die.” Clint confesses. Not again. Not in an explosion. Clint doesn’t remember what he felt when he died that time, but he knows it wasn’t good.

He just doesn’t want to remember it now. How it felt when the explosion hit him. Was he still conscious? Did he die before the fire? Did he feel afraid?

Pietro leans away for a moment and looks at him with that intense stare that pinned down many people. It’s softer, however, in ways Pietro wasn’t before.

Pietro deserved better.

“It’s okay.” Pietro says slowly and Clint wants so bad to hear his voice again. However, the hearing aid would make him also listen to desperation and death and— And he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t _deserve_ that. Silence is good. Pietro's voice doesn't matter when he has the man by his side. “We’ll solve this.”

“I don’t think we will.” Clint says and licks his lips. They’re salty because of the tears and Clint finds that it’s funny. He is the one losing control. He is the one breaking down and fearing. Must be because all he did this past year was _lose_. Must be because, as Bobbi always liked to point it out, no one can be strong all the time ( _minus Nat, she was always strong, but she died_ screaming).

Pietro does not answer. Instead, he looks at the horizon, a mix of surprise and fear. Clint dreads the expression, but like humanity, he is tempted to look at his own ending. Medusa. Lot's wife. Clint tries to turn, but Pietro’s hands keep him in place, his arms blocking even his peripherical vision. When Clint looks back, Pietro is looking at him and he looks scared, but calm. Clint immediately misses the braveness and confidence from before, but now they are on the same page again.

_On the same page again_ , he repeats his thought. _The end of the world is here. It was meant to be.  
_

Pietro says, slowly: “At least, we’ll be together.” His eyes glisten with tears that won’t fall fast enough. For the first time, Pietro isn't fast enough ( _Clint wants to ask why Pietro doesn't try running away, but he is scared of thinking that he would leave him here. That Clint would be alone and that Pietro wouldn't make it. He doesn't know which is worse_ ). Pietro holds them back, however, and Clint hopes he is not regretting spending his last moments with him. Clint sure as hell doesn’t. “Do you regret?” He asks anyway, because he was always a self-loathing bastard, sabotaging his happiness every time. It was like that with Nat. With Bobbi. Jess. And now Pietro. Sometimes you don’t learn, huh.

Sometimes you can’t help yourself.

Pietro doesn’t think. “Many things.” He says, on the same pace as before. Slow enough for Clint to understand as he reads his lips. He wishes he had had more time with him. There is so much they didn’t do; so much he didn’t say; so much he didn’t feel with Pietro. _If I could re-write my story, I’d put you there, forever with me_ , Clint thinks. It would always have a happy ending and Pietro would never be hurt again.

Then, Pietro smiles. “You, however? I do not regret you. How could I? How _would_ I?”

Pietro leans in and they kiss. Clint would like to describe it. Tear it apart and analyze it. He feels loved, he feels breathless. He feels happiness, he feels fear. He feels so, so many things, but the light comes and she blinds him. She takes away his thoughts. Takes away Pietro. Takes away everything.

In the beginning, there was light. At the end, there is too.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I should be posting _Take me backwards_ or _What is love?_ , but this challenge was beautiful and I only had four hours to write it. I will post _Take me backwards_ tomorrow o/
> 
> The prompt was super sad and I wasn't going to write about this ship, but then I remember _Secret Wars_ and I couldn't help it. I'M SORRY GUYS IT'S JUST THAT IT MADE ME SO SAD AND NOW I WANT EVERYONE IN THE SADNESS.
> 
> I totally don't remember if Nat died screaming, but it was totally cool to see that happening and... It caused great impact to Clint, since Nat was there from the very beginning to him and was actually one of the people that inspired Clint into joining the Avengers. I wish I had mentioned Wanda and Lorna, but I think that, right now, in the comics, Pietro priority would be Luna (and Clint, of course).
> 
> FYI I will totally write the Avengers Millennium story. It will be sweet and happy to make it up for all this sadness (not even for you, guys! It broke my heart writing it).
> 
> Not sure if I nailed the angst but I kinda like it. Clint is such a _strong_ character. I just wanted to see him in a fragile moment and Pietro there to pick up the pieces. I mean, we can't all be strong all the time.


End file.
